


Duckling

by assiel



Category: Star Stable
Genre: Thot Patrol - Freeform, emma has a bit of a drinking problem, first fic on ao3 yeaaaah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 09:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17846426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/assiel/pseuds/assiel
Summary: Emma wakes up to a new friend in her barn, much to her surprise and confusion.





	Duckling

    Emma’s ringtone blared as she desperately threw around sheets and pillows looking for it. It was too early in the goddamn morning for this, but _someone_ was calling her, so it must have been important, _right?_ Eventually, she crouched down, nearly falling face first onto the carpet, and located her phone which had managed to slip into the crack between her bed and the wall. With a deep sigh, Emma blindly inserted a shaky hand into the dark space, wiggling it around until she felt the vibrations of her phone. _Finally,_ she thought to herself as she jimmied it out of its predicament and back into her hands. Emma quickly swiped right to pick up the phone.

 

    “Hello?” she mumbled, still half-asleep.

 

    “Hi there! Would you like to win a trip to a luxurious isl-”

 

    Before the too-bubbly voice on the other end could finish their sentence, Emma hung up and slammed the phone down onto her bed. This wasn’t too great of an idea, and it bounced from her mattress to the floor (which was luckily carpeted and absorbed most of the impact).

 

    It was going to be a long day.

 

    Her current situation was made worse by the fact that she was going through another one of her killer hangovers. While this wasn’t an unusual thing for her to have to deal with, it always snuck up on her and hit her over the head with a chair, causing her head to hurt like hell until she did something about it. Emma cursed under her breath as she shuffled out of her bedroom and into the bathroom to take some Advil and drink some good ol’ H2O.

 

    Pretty soon Emma was down at her stables, hangover only slightly alleviated. She meandered around the stalls for quite a while, giving a nice little “hello” to all of her lovely horses. While she knew that they couldn’t talk back, they seemed to appreciate the gesture. Brightheart’s stern voice called from around the corner.

 

“Emma, you’re up a little early, aren’t you?”

 

    She groaned as she turned and started to walk towards the white stallion’s stall. “Yeah… it’s a long story.”

 

    “Is it really a long story or do you just not feel like going through the effort of actually telling it?”

 

    “...well fuck, you got me.” Brightheart chuffed in amusement as she finally reached his stall.

 

    Emma rubbed her eyes. Wait a minute, there was only supposed to be one Jorvik Warmblood in her stable, right? That’s what she thought, but now there were two… for some reason? The one standing next to Brightheart was a beautiful palomino paint that she definitely did not remember purchasing.

 

    “Brightheart? Is my mind finally down the gutter or am I seeing… double?” Emma asked, studying the new horse, wide-eyed.

 

    “Emma. You _seriously_ don’t remember what happened?”

 

    “I… no, I don’t remember anything of this horse being here.”

 

    Now it was Brightheart’s turn to look back at Emma in complete confusion. “You know what? I’m just gonna let you figure this one out on your own. Good luck.”

 

    Emma huffed. “Fine then, you be like that. Hmph.”

 

    Due to a lack of personal critical thinking skills, Emma instead turned to the Thot Patrol to ask for guidance. She quickly snapped a photo of the two Warmbloods in Brightheart’s stall on her phone, opened her messaging app, and uploaded the picture to the group chat.

 

* * *

  


 

 

 

> _🐾 **emma wolfheart** 🐾 sent wtf_is_this_horse_doing_here.png _
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : i woke up and now there’s another horse in brightheart’s stall???
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : i have no recollection of going out and buying another jorvik warmblood
> 
>  
> 
> **Mario 👌** : ...New buddy?
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : apparently
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : lemme check em out and see if they’ve got signs of an owner or a name anywhere

 

* * *

 

    Emma put her phone in the back pocket of her sweatpants and walked up to the strange new horse. It didn’t seem to be aggressive towards humans… so that was a good sign. She searched the horse everywhere for signs of a possible branding that she could recognize or even something like an ear tag that gave her “if found, please return to” engraved on it. But alas, these attempts proved fruitless. The entire time the horse, who she had determined was a mare, kept trying to get a nice nose pet or a butt rub from Emma. She, of course, couldn’t resist.

Pretty soon she was back on the group chat, searching for some sort of explanation to this odd event.

 

* * *

 

 

 

> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : ...nope
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : there’s no sign of an owner on her
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : she’s quite fond of me though for whatever reason
> 
>  

* * *

 

    

     All of a sudden, a shocking realization hit her like a freight train. _Uh oh._

 

* * *

 

 

 

> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : hold on lemme check my wallet…
> 
>  
> 
> **Mario 👌** : Emma please
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : i WAS thinking of getting a horse just like her the other day. how funny is that haha

 

* * *

 

    Emma frantically patted down her pockets for her wallet. When she finally found it, she managed to fumble it out of her hands and onto the ground, spilling all of its contents onto the tile floor below. She must have had butter fingers today or something… Quickly, she stooped down and recollected all of the various coins and bills, counting them as she went. Huh. She was missing a lot more money than she thought… last time she checked, she had about 750 more Star Coins. _Oh no_.

 

    And so Emma now had to come face to face with the fact that she had bought a whole-ass horse last night.  _Yep._ It was an ugly truth, but it definitely wasn’t going away any time soon. She would have to remind herself to look into alcohol addiction counseling later, wouldn’t she?

 

* * *

 

 

>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : well shit.
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : in my drunken stupor i managed to buy another horse.
> 
>  
> 
> **Mario 👌** : Jesus christ
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : jesus christ is right daine
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : well the good news is i’m not COMPLETELY broke
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : and she’s starting to grow on me soo
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma** **wolfheart🐾** : thanks drunk emma, i guess?
> 
>  
> 
> **Mario** 👌: ...Yay?

 

 

 

> _**🐾emma wolfheart🐾** sent palomino_mystery_horse.png _
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : now what should i call her?
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid** : duckling
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid** : she’s following you like a duckli
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid** : ng

 

* * *

 

    Emma physically “aww”ed out loud. Duckling was such a cute name; why didn’t she think of that before?

 

* * *

 

 

 

> **🐾emma wolfheart** 🐾: ella that’s adorable thank you
> 
>  
> 
> **Mario 👌** : Looks like a Jack to me
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid** : juckling
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : juckling
> 
>  
> 
> **Mario 👌** : It’s official. Juckling is her name now
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : actually wait i probably have registration papers somewhere. i mean i had to buy her, right? so obviously there are papers here _somewhere_
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : time to play yet another round of Where Did Drunk Emma Put The Important Thing??

 

* * *

 

    Emma took a deep breath and began to focus. Now, where would she decide to put something…? Her first instinct was, of course, her desk. But wait, she would have noticed the papers as she got ready to go earlier, right? Well, she could scratch that off the list. Maybe the wardrobe? Emma quickly went over and searched through the absolute mess of clothes and various other items. A-ha, there it… wasn’t. Emma rubbed her temples in thought. Perhaps it was somewhere in the tack room?

 

    This went on for a lot longer than she would’ve liked to admit. She was just about to say “fuck it” when all of a sudden she spotted a few pieces of paper crumpled up in a feed bucket that was lying in the dusty corner of an empty horse stall. Almost instantly, she rushed over and swooped it up. To her disgust, the papers were inexplicably… damp? Drunk Emma definitely had something to do with that, but she didn’t even want to KNOW what she did to make them that way.

 

* * *

 

 

 

> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : ok so i found the papers
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : presumably when i was wasted last night i thought it would be absolutely hilarious to shoot them into a bucket like i was some star basketball player
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : they’re oddly… _moist_ for whatever reason. im gonna let em dry out
> 
>  
> 
> **Mario 👌** : Do I even wanna know what you were up to last night?
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : probably not. and i dont want to know either
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid** : wait emma have u tried jogging aaway from her
> 
>  
> 
> _**cryptid** linked _ [ _Duck Run_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWgbmgIzoT8)
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid** : so she could do thsi
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : omg… i GOTTA do that now
> 
>  
> 
> **emo flamingo** : i feel like i should risk being late to work to witness this for myself but i really shouldnt be late given the fact that i drive trailers around
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : you probably wont miss much shane

 

* * *

 

    Time to test the hypothesis. Emma opened the stall door, allowing Duckling (or Juckling) to step outside of Brightheart’s stall and into the walkway. Promptly, Emma slid open the heavy stable door that lead to the outside world and stepped out, waiting to see what she would do. Duckling was quick to follow, meeting Emma outdoors within only a few seconds.

 

    And then Emma took off running down the path. After 2 literal seconds of running, the mare was cantering behind her, whinnying playfully. Emma whipped out her phone to snap a blurry picture of her new-found friend.

 

* * *

  


 

 

> _**🐾emma wolfheart🐾** sent running_for_my_life.png _
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : well ella i’m proud to say that your theory was indeed correct
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid** : wow
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : the papers should be dry by now lemme go check on em

 

* * *

 

    The papers were now... somewhat legible. Emma gently picked them up and placed them onto the table, spreading them out flat so they were easier to read. Her eyes scanned the paper for the registered name of Duckling, wondering what drunk Emma could have possibly named a horse. Hopefully it wasn’t something _too_ terrible. But after quite some time of searching through smeared handwriting, Emma was able to make out the name.

 

    “Registered name: Appledash”. Huh. So apparently her drunk self was thinking back to her My Little Pony fangirl days. Intriguing. Emma would now share her findings with the Thot Squad.

 

* * *

 

 

 

> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : duckling’s registered name is appledash
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid** : :realestate:
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : :realestate:
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid** : you gotta put a rainbow on her tack somewhere now
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : i will dont worry
> 
>  
> 
> **🐾emma wolfheart🐾** : actually hold that thought i have the PERFECT accessory for her
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid:** :realestate: :realestate: :realestate:

 

* * *

 

    Emma rummaged through her closet again, searching for one of her most beloved bows. You would think that because she uses it so much that it would be at the top of the “pile”; however, her wardrobe tended to work in strange and mysterious manners. After a good 5 minutes of taking out various masses of clothing, she finally found it right at the bottom. Figures. She excitedly hurried over to Duckling and tied the multi-colored bow around her long cream-colored tail.

 

* * *

 

 

> _**🐾emma wolfheart🐾** sent i_diagnose_you_with_gay.png _
> 
>  
> 
> **cryptid:** gay energy
> 
>  
> 
> **Mario 👌** : Big gay energy

 

* * *

 

    Finally, something _good_ had arisen from her raging alcoholism. Emma stroked the face of her new favorite horse and began to think about how much worse her drinking problem would g-

 

    “Emma, what did you just say about Duckling being your new favorite horse?” Brightheart angrily puffed.

 

    Ah. Right. Brightheart could hear her inner monologue too. She groaned. Now she would have to deal with his fury as well as her hangover.

**Author's Note:**

> That's all, folks!
> 
> This is my first actual fanfic that I've written and felt proud enough to leave it up for more than 5 minutes :]
> 
> Fun fact: Most of the group chat dialogue was actually real!
> 
> Hopefully you enjoyed!


End file.
